by Michael Scott Curnes

Wicked Ninnish

A fourth fiction novel by Michael Scott Curnes will be published in the Spring 2020.

(From the Back Cover)

Into a dead calm left behind the previous summer’s War in the Woods — a skirmish that pitted environmentalists against loggers and resulted in the largest, mass arrest in Canadian history, paddles a thirty-something conditional heir to the Carter Pulp and Paper empire — Heritage Carter III.

With the sawdust settled and the chainsaws idled in a ceasefire nobody expected would last this long into 1994 — certainly not his billionaire grandfather who needs tree fiber flowing again to feed his hungry chippers, digesters and refiners — a daring, corporate intervention gets underway. As a test of loyalty and with his inheritance on the line, Heritage has been dispatched to break a logjam in the stalled timber negotiations and to fix a management problem at The Headlands Lodge. Into both ventures his ailing grandfather has millions riding. Into his law school dropout grandson and only heir, he has invested next to nothing.

Going by the secret alias he hopes to become locally known, Tage is intercepted on the dock by Dottie Bard, who is the town realtor, a three-term village councillor and general gadabout when she’s not moonlighting as the high priestess of a not-so-secret Wicca coven. During her opening litany of the do’s and don’ts in this drippy, tight-knit rainforest community, Heritage falls into and under the first of several traps and spells.

With his new kayak as packed with gear as his head is crammed with schemes, this under-estimated double agent quickly uncovers his own mission to halt the decades of damages his grandfather’s companies have been carving from this rainforest. First, though, Heritage must limb the deadwood off the family tree before he can outwit the witches and a 15-year-old terror named Aidan — That’s Satan with an A.